Posts Tagged ‘Open Courseware’

 
30
Jan

Online education, self directed learning and student centered learning

by Cathy in Education, Education Technology, Future, Higher Education

2 Comments Comments

In their article in USDLA’s Distance Learning for Educators, Trainers, and Leaders Maria Puzziferro and Kaye Shelton ask questions regarding online education and distance learning that we as educators in online courses and programs should be asking ourselves as we review our courses and programs for quality.

One assumption that they question is “how do we define student or learning centered and students are in control of their own learning (pp 10).   this made me stop and think..it is easy to assume that this latest “buzz word phrase,” of the day drives the direction of online education today and education in general.  If we can say that our courses, programs and services are student or learner centered..then job done..we are meeting the needs of students.  But do we really know what this means?  does the student?  Does your educational institution or organization have a common agreement regarding what learning/student centered means and does it matter?   or are these just good PR buzz phrases?  Here are some various definitions of the terms and the institutions who use them…

We use the term “learner centered” to refer to environments that pay careful attention to the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and beliefs that learners bring to the educational setting.…Teachers who are learner centered recognize the importance of building on the conceptual and cultural knowledge that students bring with them to the classroom…. (retrieved from ..http://cndls.georgetown.edu/crossroads/vkp/resources/glossary/learnercentered.htm, January 30,2010)
Learner-centered education places the student at the center of education. It begins with understanding the educational contexts from which a student comes. It continues with the instructor evaluating the student’s progress towards learning objectives. By helping the student acquire the basic skills to learn, it ultimately provides a basis for learning throughout life. It therefore places the responsibility for learning on the student, while the instructor assumes responsibility for facilitating the student’s education. This approach strives to be individualistic, flexible, competency-based, varied in methodology and not always constrained by time or place. (retrieved from http://www.abor.asu.edu/4_special_programs/lce/afc-defined_lce.htm )

...in the learner-centered paradigm, knowledge is the combined efforts of the teacher and the students. Under the guidance of the teacher, the students synthesize the gathered information using problem solving, critical thinking, and inquiry skills.

… the learner-centered classroom instruction, greater emphasis is given on the meaningfulness of knowledge. Students acquire knowledge to address real-life issues and problems.
In the learner-centered classroom, the students are actively involved in seeking out knowledge.
in the learner-centered classroom, the importance of right answers is overshadowed by the importance of creating better questions. Thus, assessment tools vary to embrace the multiple facets of learning. Besides paper tests, there will be portfolios,  and others.

…in the learner-centered paradigm, assessment is intertwined with classroom instruction. The results of a test are used to discover learning difficulties. The functions of the assessment are to diagnose learning problems and to encourage better learning.

The perspective that couples a focus on individual learners (their heredity, experiences, perspectives, backgrounds, talents, interests, capacities, and needs) with a focus on learning (the best available knowledge about learning and how it occurs and about teaching practices that are most effective in promoting the highest levels of motivation, learning, and achievement for all learners). This dual focus then informs and drives educational decision making. The learner-centered perspective is a reflection of the twelve learner-centered psychological principles in the programs, practices, policies, and people that support learning for all. (McCombs & Whisler, 1997)

Premises of the Learner-Centered Model

  1. Learners are distinct and unique. Their distinctiveness and uniqueness must be attended to and taken into account if learners are to engage in and take responsibility for their own learning.
  2. Learners’ unique differences include their emotional states of mind, learning rates, learning styles, stages of development, abilities, talents, feelings of efficacy, and other academic and nonacademic attributes and needs. These must be taken into account if all learners are to be provided with the necessary challenges and opportunities for learning and self-development.
  3. Learning is a constructive process that occurs best when what is being learned is relevant and meaningful to the learner and when the learner is actively engaged in creating his or her own knowledge and understanding by connecting what is being learned with prior knowledge and experience.
  4. Learning occurs best in a positive environment, one that contains positive interpersonal relationships and interactions, that contains comfort and order, and in which the learner feels appreciated, acknowledged, respected, and validated.
  5. Learning is a fundamentally natural process; learners are naturally curious and basically interested in learning about and mastering their world. Although negative thoughts and feelings sometimes interfere with this natural inclination and must be dealt with, the learner does not require “fixing.”
(McCombs & Whisler, 1997)
Student-centered learning (SCL), or learner-centeredness, is a learning model that places the student (learner) in the center of the learning process. In student-centered learning, students are active participants in their learning; they learn at their own pace and use their own strategies; they are more intrinsically than extrinsically motivated; learning is more individualized than standardized. Student-centered learning develops learning-how-to-learn skills such as problem solving, critical thinking, and reflective thinking. Student-centered learning accounts for and adapts to different learning styles of students (National Center for Research on Teacher Learning. 1999).
Students are actively involved.
Emphasis is on using and communicating knowledge effectively to address enduring and emerging issues and problems in real life contexts.
Professors role is to coach and facilitate.  Professor and student evaluate learning together.
Teaching and assessing are intertwined.
Assessment is used to promote and diagnose learning.
Emphasis is on generating better questions and learning from errors.
Desired learning is accessed directly through papers, projects, performances, portfolios and the like.
Approach is compatible with interdisciplinary investigation.
Culture is cooperative, collaborative, and supportive.
Professors and students learn together.
(retrieved from http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/instruction/assessment/dictionary/learnercentered.html  01/3/10)

After reviewing the above definitions I have reached the conclusion that defining learner centered is varied and without much to ‘hang your hat on” in regards to using as a foundation for quality, student success, development of quality and measuring the effectiveness of the program or course.

The most current term that I hear bandied about is “self directed learning..” exactly what is self directed learning and what does it mean for students?

Defined as:

self-directed learning (SDL), the individual takes the initiative and the responsibility for what occurs. Individuals select, manage, and assess their own learning activities, which can be pursued at any time, in any place, through any means, at any age. (retrieved from http://www.selfdirectedlearning.com/ 01/30/10)
Be sure and read Roger Hiemstra’s article on self-directed learning which includes the following definition:

Several things are known about self-directed learning: (a) individual learners can become empowered to take increasingly more responsibility for various decisions associated with the learning endeavor; (b) self-direction is best viewed as a continuum or characteristic that exists to some degree in every person and learning situation; (c) self-direction does not necessarily mean all learning will take place in isolation from others; (d) self-directed learners appear able to transfer learning, in terms of both knowledge and study skill, from one situation to another; (e) self-directed study can involve various activities and resources, such as self-guided reading, participation in study groups, internships, electronic dialogues, and reflective writing activities; (f) effective roles for teachers in self-directed learning are possible, such as dialogue with learners, securing resources, evaluating outcomes, and promoting critical thinking; (g) some educational institutions are finding ways to support self-directed study through open-learning programs, individualized study options, non-traditional course offerings, and other innovative programs.
(retrieved from http://www-distance.syr.edu/sdlhdbk.html, 01/3/10)

Regardless of how we apply these terms, how learners learned, and how teachers teach those students who are now working their way through the public school system (elementary and secondary), virtual schools, and charter schools, will be the genesis for tranformative change in our higher education institutions.   One question that I kept returning to is how do measure success or failure when through these definitions we are seeking to put more and more of the accountability for learning on the student.  And who should be accountable in this age of “no child left behind,” standardized testing of everything and the cookie cutter approach to education that entails ..if “student centered learning” en-vogue movement of the day, especially in online education.

What is quality in online education, what should we be measuring and evaluating?

There are new paradigms in education that should be considered in evaluating the online course or program.  How does that course or program engage the students, provide them with opportunities for synthesis of the materials, critical thinking, multi “everything,” validates their learning, provides for opportunities of natural and designed collaboration, communicate across multiple modalities to multi dimensional/diversified audiences?  How do we measure how students create content that is pertinent to the outcomes of what they need to learn, how they are teaching and learning with others.    How the use of PowerPoint is applied in an online course suddenly doesn’t seem so important as we prepare students for working, accessing information, communicating, and collaborating in a fast paced global society. Finally we must ask ourselves why it is so compelling that we
“control” our students.  Why must we funnel their access to content through our ‘filters,” and why do actually think we are really exerting any control any way.

So how do we define quality and does it make sense to measure the quality in online education against that of face to face..in my opinion that is a cop out…we should stretch the boundaries of where technology can take us in online education by expanding our definition of what that means outside of the parameters of face to face education.  There is so much more that we can do with technology, increasing the amount of time that a student spend reviewing online content, researching on  their own, and multi-modalities of delivery that meets an individual student’s needs.

It has been asserted that students, who have been dissatisfied with the content in their courses have actually reviewed the content in similar open courses available on the web. they do this in order to  supplement their face to face and online courses.

So then what is the role of teachers, faculty, and administrators.  This is the disruption of education that is occurring, we don’t know, our roles are in transition.  Do students and learners need us, can the tools of technology facilitate and define what student need to learn …will technology remove the education “middle” ground of delivery in much the same way that the music industry has been disrupted, cable televisions, newspapers, and publishing.  I ponder that in order for the ideal definitions of “student centered learning” and self directed learning to be achieved the educational institutions, the teachers, and administrators have to be removed from the equation?

As an educator I acknowledge that my profession is changing, when the student or consumer defines how to validate what he or she has learned and that validation is widely accepted then our educational institutions have been disrupted.   While I am excited by change, as always ..I am apprehensive and selfishly concerned how this change will impact me.

McCombs, B. L., & Whisler, J. S. (1997). The learner-centered classroom and school: Strategies for increasing student motivation and achievement. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

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21
Nov

Open Courseware, social networking, thoughts on the future of education..

by Cathy in Education, Education Technology, Free Education, Higher Education, Open Courseware, Open Education Resources

2 Comments Comments
I have some observations on open education resources, open courseware, and open access, what I think it is and what I think it is not.  Over time our online world has become well populated with “learning opportunities, objects and events,” not only do we need to filter and sort through this but also determine if we are going to validate these and if so how. In the last several months many new social networking, collaboration, and information ‘tools” have burst on the scene..and soon to follow are those of us in education who start evaluating these tools for the application to education.. I think this is a good thing, however  I also have to question if we are expending our energies appropriately.

On one side of the equation are the early adopters who are scrambling to apply new technology to their courses, introduce it to faculty or infuse its use system wide, on the other end are those who strongly feel that new tech tools, social networking, virtual worlds, and social networking really has no place in education  and is a distraction in the classroom. Open education resources or (OER) are no exception to this as well.

I have often heard the statement made…there is no evidence or research that demonstrates that any institution uses OER for development of a course much less a program.   There is also no research demonstrating whether or not individuals use OER to facilitate their informal learning and whether or not they have sought to have that learning validated.  I have yet to delve into any research so am not certain whether or not these observation are credible or not.

However I do contend that open(ness) or open source does have a demonstrable track record of success as it has its genesis in the open source software movement.  The open source software movement can be given credit for driving progress in information technology, software, and even demonstrating the power of collaboration in today’s society.  Open source started, according to sources in the late 1970′s and early 1980′s given this history and continued evolution into today I believe that it provides evidence of the direction that open education resources can take given the right conditions.

What are the elements of this “perfect storm”  (referred to also by Adler and Brown in their article Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0)  of resources and people who will make the application and use of OER to learning..many things and there may still be some ingredients missing, however I believe that some of the most essential are in place.  Open courseware sites and institutions do not grant certificates or degrees, no instructional support is provided, there may also be certain terms of use associated with the course materials.

I currently see:


Disruptive technology:  it seems that there are many freely and widely available technical tools that provide a platform for delivering content to learners, however the problem, in my opinion is the overwhelming amount of that content that is available.  In regards to the tools it seems that there is a rush to get them online and available to users, they maybe overshadowed and or ‘out-shined” by someone else’s innovation they are the first on the market.   An example of the growth in content includes the evidence provided on the OpenCourseware Consortium website which indicates collaborations with over 200 higher education institutions.    A great advantage of the technology we have today and technology of the future is that it provides us with educational content through a variety of channels via text, audio, video, live web casts, and virtual worlds.    Not only that the technology provides for multiple points or networks of communication which provides for groups to collaborate, discuss and remix content.  This is the network age, this is the age we all learn together and from eachother.

Another ingredient to this perfect storm is the availability of content on the web, there are now a plethora of sties and resources for educational content, these include:


YouTube. edu: I strongly suggest the reader to look at Youtube.edu carefully, look at the number of viewers on some of these lectures, review the comments and determine how viewers are using these lectures.  I am certain that viewers, outside of the professor’s classroom are reviewing these lectures and making them part of their personal learning network.

Open Education Resource Commons:  “Open Educational Resources are teaching and learning materials that you may freely use and reuse, without charge. OER often have a Creative Commons or GNU license that state specifically how the material may be used, reused, adapted, and shared.”  Examples of their resources include:  courses, interactive mini lessons, adaptations of existing open work, peer-reviewed electronic textbooks, K-12 resources.

Wikiversity:  a Wikimedia Foundation project devoted to learning resources, learning projects, and research for use in all levels, types, and styles of education from pre-school to university, including professional training and informal learning. We invite teachers, students, and researchers to join us in creating open educational resources and collaborative learning communities.

Connexions: a place to view and share educational material made of small knowledge chunks called modules that can be organized as courses, books, reports, etc. Anyone may view or contribute:

  • authors create and collaborate
  • instructors rapidly build and share custom collections
  • learners find and explore content


ccLearn: ccLearn is a division of Creative Commons dedicated to realizing the full potential of the Internet to support open learning and open educational resources.

DiscoverEd, a search prototype that provides scalable search and discovery for educational resources on the web.

FreeLearning: Here you will find FREE TO USE learning resources that you can use to supplement your own course materials or learning. Some of these are from BC-based projects while others are from Open Educational Resource projects from around the world.


Utah Open Courseware: Utah may have “lost funding” for their  open courseware project however the website is still very much alive.  The website states: Utah OpenCourseWare is a collection of educational material used in our formal campus courses, and seeks to provide people around the world with an opportunity to access high quality learning opportunities.

The Chinese Opencourseware initiative is one to watch, in fact I first learned about when I was touring educational sites in Second Life at the Educators Co-op.  I have heard claims that “no one” has gotten a degree or even completed a course using open courseware…my guess is they don’t know what is going on in Asia or India with the use of open courseware.

FETP Open Courseware: From the website: students may use FETP’s materials to guide independent study. Course syllabi, lecture notes, reading lists and problem sets used in many one-year mid-career program and executive education courses are already available online and over time FETP OpenCourseWare will include all Fulbright School materials (subject to copyright law).

Japan OpenCourseware

John Hopkins Open Courseware:  J ohns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s OPENCOURSEWARE (OCW) project provides access to content of the School’s most popular courses.

Notre Dame OCW: Notre Dame OCW is a free and open educational resource for faculty, students, and self-learners throughout the world.



Private industry is also getting involved in the opencourseware initiative as well as indicated by the Novell Opencourseware site. They state that: OpenCourseWare is a collection of educational materials developed by Novell Training Services for authorized courses and other customer training purposes. By making these materials available to the public, we hope to extend to all people worldwide the opportunity to access these high quality learning materials.

BBC Online Courses: These online modules and guides are free for you to use. They were originally designed for BBC staff and in publishing them here we have not made many editorial changes to them.



Podcasts for education:

The Education Podcast Network is an effort to bring together into one place, the wide range of podcast programming that may be helpful to teachers looking for content to teach with and about, and to explore issues of teaching and learning in the 21st century.


Learning in Hand: Students and teachers from all over the world are learning from audio and video programs on desktop computers, laptops, iPods, Pocket PCs, Palm handhelds, and other devices.

Apple and education podcasts

Education podcasts: Education podcasts from universities, colleges, students, teachers — everyone who uses podcasting to learn and to teach others. We’re all life-long learners, aren’t we? Even some of the littlest ones in k-12 schools are podcasting. Be transported back to your elementary days…if only this technology were available then.

A good resource on educational podcasts is here at Shambles.net.

Education World (from their website) has compiled the Web’s latest and greatest podcasting resources to help you get started with this exciting and doable technology. Included: How-to articles, lesson ideas, free and fee-based software download sites, and much more!

Social networking is another part of the perfect storm and the technology that underlies this rising tide of “connectedness,” (yes I am in George Siemens and Stephen Downes Open Course on Connectiveness).  There is, of course, Twitter, Facebook, and Ning, there are also efforts by learning management systems to better incorporate networking tools into their systems.  However can an educators use tools such as Ning, Elgg, Twine, and .. well there are so many tools out there now I overwhelmed at the moment.

I am a member of several Ning Communities and still trying to figure that out.   Ning  allows the user to join social networks which provides memberships to communities that have similar interests, etc., Elgg seems to be similar to Ning but you can host it on your own website.  I hope to have an Elgg site eventually in order to test it for delivery of course materials.    From their website:

Ning is a platform for creating your own social network. Our passion is putting new social networks in the hands of anyone with a good idea. With Ning, your social network can be for anything and anyone. You start by naming your social network and choosing a combination of features (photos, videos, forums, events, etc.) from an ever-growing list of options. You can then customize your social network’s appearance and launch it! People who join your social network will automatically have a customizable profile page and will be able to message and friend each other.

Elgg is an open source product which “comes with advanced user management and administration, social networking, cross-site tagging, powerful access control lists, internationalisation support, multiple view support (eg cell phones, iPhone), an advanced templating engine, a widget framework and more.

I used Twine for  a while to collect content..I think it has great potential. I understand it is currently undergoing some major revisions, I can’t wait to see what they do next. According to their website Twine allows you to:

Collect content. Join a twine on any subject or start your own to track your interests. Twine organizes your content by topic, so you can keep track of it and share it with anyone you want.

Share interests. The Twine community is interested in the same things you are. Find people who are passionate about your interests. Join conversations. Learn something new. Share things you find with relevant communities.

Get custom recommendations. The more you use Twine, the smarter it gets. Fill out your profile to discover new info and interests through Twine’s personalized recommendation

Why do I think that we are or are not expending our current energies appropriately because not doing anything and think that education and students will be what it was 10, 5 or even a year ago is deceiving ourselves.  Education is now going down the path of being irrevocably and forever changed.  Someone will find an acceptable way to measure that learners who “self learn” are achieving the appropriate learning outcomes, of providing learners with the appropriate content that they need to learn, networked learning will be the norm.  It doesn’t mean the end of colleges and universities …they will look much the same way in 10 years as they do now..the experience of college will always be a vital part of our culture and our society ..but how the classroom looks and how students access content may be very different than it is right now.

So are we in the “eye of a perfect’ storm with all  these factors in  place which also includes many that I have not covered such as education experts such as Curtis Bonk, George Siemens, Stephen Downes, John Seely Brown and many others advocating for open courses, understanding the technology that it takes to make this vision happen as well as advocates for social networking.  In addition to this the credibility given to University of the People via its receiving support from the United Nations and Peer to Peer.  In addition to this we are seeing a push for education on a scale, globally that we have never before seen, an economy that can no longer support the expense of traditional education, a coming tide of retirements by faculty and administrators from educational institutions, and a universal realization that education IS lifelong if one is to keep current with trends in his/her occupation.





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4
Sep

Discussion on Curtis Bonk’s The World is Open a look at Resources

by Cathy in Education, Education Technology, Free Education, Higher Education, Open Courseware, Open Education Resources

2 Comments Comments

The World is Open How Technology is Revolutionizing Education  By Curtis Bonk

(Some font problems still learning WordPress)


Books such as Bonk’s nudge education towards change, perhaps nudge is not the right word, but if education moves a nudge it’s a huge leap.  Education maybe open but it’s definitely not flat..there are tall peaks and low valleys..the peaks being new initiatives such as the University of the People, Peer 2 Peer and, of course MIT.   What Bonk has done is to take a systems view of these initiatives.  Each of these, viewed individually may not seem so disruptive on its own.  Taken as whole these initiatives are rapidly changing traditional education.

This blog is written in order on conceptualize the following:  We All Learn

W:      Web Searching in the World of EBooks
E:       E-Learning and blended learning
A:       Availability of open source and free software
L:       Leveraged resources open courseware
L:       Learning object repositories and portals
L:       Learner participation in open information communities
e:       Electronic collaboration
A:       Alternative Reality Learning
R:      Real time Mobility and Portability
N:      Networks of personalized learning

What follows is a short list of resources which I found on the web that I felt related to each of Bonk’s key points.  I was excited to find some semantic resources for one or two of these.  One that I did not include here is Twine which I discussed in an earlier post.

Web Searching in the world of eBooks

Access Text Networking:

The AccessText Network facilitates and supports the national delivery of alternative electronic textbooks to higher education institutions for students with documented disabilities.

AccessText provides these textbooks by leveraging an online database powered by Intuit QuickBase® and incorporating publisher-provided information on thousands of textbook titles.

Open Textbook Initiative

Open Text Book is a registry of textbooks (and related materials) which are open — that is free for anyone to use, reuse and redistribute. It is run by the Open Knowledge Foundation.

Connexions

a place to view and share educational material made of small knowledge chunks called modules that can be organized as courses, books, reports, etc

. Anyone may view or contribute:

  • authors create and collaborate
  • instructors rapidly build and share custom collections
  • learners find and explore content

Examples of Affordable, Free and Open Textbooks

This page contains a vetted list of affordable, online educational resources that might be used in place of an expensive, commercial textbook.  The focus of this list is usability; each resource was recommended by at least one professor who has assigned it.  For links to other more extensive collections and repositories, see our links section.

Make Textbooks Affordable Organization

eLearning and Blended Learning


There are a variety of eLearning resource, free,open and with paid subscriptions on the Internet.

Blended Learning: This page provides links to some resources on blended learning – that is a learning solution created through a mixture of face-to-face and online learning delivered through a mix of media.

Bonk referred to Notschool.net

eLearning according to Wikipedia may be defined as: a term which is commonly used, but does not have a common definition. Most frequently it seems to be used for web-based distance education, with no face-to-face interaction. However, also much broader definitions are common. For example, it may include all types of technology enhanced learning (TEL), where technology is used to support the learning process.

There are resources available such as eLearning Guild for professionals in the field of eLearning design.

ELearn Magazine

Availability of Open Source and Open Software

Open Source: Open source is a development method for software that harnesses the power of distributed peer review and transparency of process. The promise of open source is better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility, lower cost, and an end to predatory vendor lock-in.

Leveraged resources open courseware

John Hopkins OpenCourseWare Initiative:      Project provides access to content of the School’s most popular courses. As challenges to the world’s health escalate daily, the School feels a moral imperative to provide equal and open access to information and knowledge about the obstacles to the public’s health and their potential solutions.

The most current development in this area is folksemantic semantic website that pushes your education interests and needs to you.   According to the website for the Center for Open and Sustainable Learning Folksemantic is:

“a project to create tools that increase the impact of open education resources by helping people find, filter, collaborate around, and remix them. As part of the project, work is underway to integrate the OCW Finder, OER Recommender, and Luvfoo. Plans are to improve these tools and add collaboration, personalized recommendation, widgets, and publishing features. COSL is holding an online meeting on March 26 to describe the Folksementic project and solicit input.”

Learning Objects repository and portals

Flexible Learning Toolboxes (Toolboxes) are high quality, cost effective interactive e-learning and assessment resources featuring scenarios, images and activities. They are designed for use by training providers, industry and business and support online delivery of recognised training packages for the vocational  education and training sector.

Learning Objects, Learning Activities: LOLA is an exchange for facilitating the sharing of high-quality learning objects. It contains materials for use across the curriculum, with a particular focus on modules for Information Literacy

Museums: an exhaustive list of museums on the web

Learning Participation in Open Information Communities

Students/learners creating learning objects such as YouTube videos, flickr, and scribd docs.  These types of sites seem to proliferate on the web.


Electronic Collaboration

According to the Business Dictionary this is the: Process of monitoring, critiquing, and cooperating in a project or program by using internet, emails, groupware, etc.

Alternative Reality Learning:

Innovative learning games: alternate reality game (ARG) is an interactive experience that uses the real world as a platform to tell a story that may be affected by participants’ ideas or actions”Alternate reality games leverage social technologies to some degree or another for game designers (known as puppetmasters) to provide information to participants, and for participants to communicate with leash other during the process of the game. ARGs are sometimes described as the first narrative art form native to the Internet, because their storytelling relies on the two main activities conducted there: searching for information, and sharing information.”

Virtual reality education website


Real time Mobility Learning and Portability

Define as fromWikipedia: Mobile learning is: Any sort of learning that happens when the learner is not at a fixed, predetermined location, or learning that happens when the learner takes advantage of the learning opportunities offered by mobile technologies.

Mobile learning institute: Nokia, a world leader in mobile communications, and the Pearson Foundation sponsor the Mobile Learning Institute, which delivers engaging, personalized, project-based learning right to classrooms and community centers across the United States

Networks of Personalized Learning

Personalized Learning Space

This space is for folks interested in the idea of making learning (online, blended, or hybrid) more personalized. This includes not only learning design and instruction, but also the tools and technologies that can be used to make learning more personal.

Refer back to Folksemantic

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24
Aug

Using Mobile/handheld devices for learning

by Cathy in Education, Education Technology, Higher Education, Semantic Web, Uncategorized, Web 2.0

1 Comment Comments

The focus of this entry into my blog is on eTech Group’s June 2009 report on Global Mobile Learning, IPod Touch and Studywiz Learning Environment. I happen to own the handheld Ipod Touch, if you are not familiar with this device I suggest you go here http://www.apple.com/ to find more information. Understanding the use of the mobile device and its application to learning is essential. According to research conducted by the Pew Research and American Life Project the use of handheld devices will be the primary way to connect to the Internet by 2020. Using mobile devices to access the Internet via mobile cell phone access is seen as more possible instead of the use of computers via broadband connections. It is estimated that approximately 4.6 billion cell phones are currently in use. Contrary to this report Brandon Hall Research reports that “by the end of 2009…2.6 billion mobile phones will be in use. That works out to 41 percent of the global population carrying mobile phones by the end of 2009,” (retrieved from http://www.brandon-hall.com/publications/mobilelearning/mobilelearning-comesofage.shtml August 2009).

The ubiquity of mobile devices is changing the way we learn as well. The eTech Group’s is a presentation of the application of handheld devices for lean ring. This study addressed several things including studying the potential of handheld devices such as the Ipod for learning. In this study the learning management system or learning environment, Studywiz was used. Information on Studywiz can be found here, this study was my introduction to Studywiz and this is something I will have to explore further. Two school were included in the study, the study was at the elementary grade level.

This study sought to answer several questions, two primary ones are:

How can a mobile device (such as the Ipod Touch) improve our student’s understanding of themselves in a global context.

And…

What impact does movie learning and multicultural text have on student achievement and cultural appreciation.

Several activities were designed for the students to apply in using their handheld devices:

Putting Google links and projects in a blog
Browsing the Internet for research
Synching tunes with Itunes
interviews with local media
Calendar settings
Using video with the Ipod
Discussions in English
Using Studywiz Learning Environment
Quizzes
Audible for Audio Books
Numeracy Web Applications
Dictionary.com
Whiteboard

Students also created their own podcasts.

The Ipod was also used for:

Sending attendance logs by faculty to administration
Immediate communication from one teacher to another
Pushing emails in Studywiz environment
Encourage parents to log-in to Studywiz Learning Environment to read messages and blogs from teachers

Details on Studywiz:

After the class the students indicate increased confidence in:

Word Processing
Studywiz learning environment
Presentation software and Internet

Main activities included:

Researching school assignments
Blogs, wikis, chts
Downloading music and videos
Social Video sites
Increased the use and range of techniques
Increased the use of Internet research
Blogging downloading audio and videos and podcasts

The students agreed, when giving their feedback that the use of technology was important in improving their lives. Some of the challenges that the teachers found in applying the new technology was the need for time in using the technology and changing their pedagogy from that of a teacher centered focus to a learner centered focus.

There are many resources on the use of Mobile Learning/handheld devices for learning on the internet. I suggest you get out your Blackberry,I Phone, Ipod touch and search them out!

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